AZCIR

Patients file grievances, experts want reforms at Arizona State Hospital

This project was funded in part by support from the Fund for Investigative Journalism. Isaac Contreras lives alone and he says it’s making him sick. He’s got a room and a bathroom to himself, but the ...
Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting

Border Patrol now targeting legal immigrants for ‘carry your papers’ law in southern Arizona

Border Patrol in southern Arizona cited more than 100 people for not carrying their immigration documents in 2025 as part of ...
AZCIR

Dozens of people died in Arizona sober living homes as state officials fumbled Medicaid fraud response

Arizona officials acknowledged that a fraud scheme targeting Indigenous people with addictions cost taxpayers $2.5 billion. But they haven’t accounted publicly for the number of deaths tied to the ...
AZCIR

Corporate marijuana dispensaries flex financial muscle, overtake Arizona’s social equity program

Denzel Mason was halfway through his Friday shift as an assistant manager at Phoenix Relief Center, a marijuana dispensary in southwest Phoenix, when his phone rang with the news. He had spent much of ...
AZCIR

Arizona gave families public money for private schools. Then private schools raised tuition.

Get AZCIR’s latest investigations and updates delivered straight into your inbox, for free. Last year, Arizona became the first state in the nation to offer universal school choice for all families.
AZCIR

State leaders misled public about scope of Medicaid fraud crisis

Carmen Heredia resigned this week as director of the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System ahead of a state Senate confirmation hearing. Republican lawmakers had criticized her response to a ...
AZCIR

Groundwater regulation weaknesses exploited by industrial-scale agriculture

ELFRIDA, Ariz. — Elaine Bailey stood at the microphone at the Sunsites Community Center in southeastern Arizona, voice shaking as she described the massive scale of new agricultural development next ...
AZCIR

Investors, cannabis corporations acquire more social equity licenses as deadline to open dispensaries looms

As Arizona’s remaining social equity license holders scramble to open marijuana dispensaries before a looming October deadline, private investors and major cannabis corporations have continued to ...
AZCIR

God-given rights: The nationwide spread of the ‘constitutional sheriff’

Get AZCIR’s latest investigations and updates delivered straight into your inbox, for free. GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Against the background hum of the convention center, Dar Leaf settled into a club ...
AZCIR

‘Sovereign citizen’ filings flood Pima County, parallel national resurgence of controversial movement

A 63-page packet arrived at the Pima County Recorder’s Office in January, postmarked from Texas with unusual formatting identifying the sender: oddly hyphenated names, stray colons and bracketed-off ...
AZCIR

Arizona’s Hualapai Valley now a ‘de facto transfer basin’ for out-of-state investors and corporate farms

Get AZCIR’s latest investigations and updates delivered straight into your inbox, for free. When controversial Las Vegas developer Jim Rhodes abandoned plans for a sprawling community near the ...
AZCIR

Did the Biden Administration redirect Social Security funds to support unauthorized immigrants?

Get AZCIR’s latest investigations and updates delivered straight into your inbox, for free. There is no evidence that funds from the Social Security Administration were redirected to support ...